
/Ot^' 



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V 



HAKSPERE'S SONNETS 





1 






Shakspere's Sonnets 



AN ESSAY BY 



HORACE DAVIS 



FROM THE "OVERLAND MONTHLY' 
MARCH, 1888 



SAN FRANCISCO 
C. A. MURDOCK & CO. 



41618 



?fU*^ 







SHAKSPERE'S SONNETS. 



EVERYBODY reads Shakspere's plays, but very 
few are familiar with his sonnets. The old- 
fashioned diction and the odd, obsolete words might 
have excused this neglect ten years ago, but to-day the 
admirable notes of Dowden and Rolfe open the door 
for everybody to study them, and whoever has the 
courage to penetrate their mysteries will find a strange 
fascination in them. The wonderful beauty of illus- 
tration and the compact, condensed expression of 
thought remind the reader at times of Shakspere's 
best plays, while the gusts of intense personal feeling 
that sweep across some of these poems make him feel 
very near the heart of the great poet, adding to the 
mystery that clouds their real meaning, and investing 
them with a personal interest that challenges us to an 
eager search for their true interpretation. 

Are they really a chapter from his own life, and do 
they tell us a part of that experience which found 
utterance in the despair of a Hamlet and the passion 
of a Lear ? Suppose that in the process of repairing 
Crosby House in London or the old Henley street 
homestead in Stratford, a workman should chance 
upon a bundle of old letters in some dusty recess, 



giving a picture of Shakspere's life in London from 
his own pen, what a thrill of eager surprise would 
move the world of letters ! How the news would be 
telegraphed around the globe. With what interest 
should we watch the deciphering of the crabbed, 
faded characters that opened to us the heart of the 
great poet ! Such a series of pictures, I believe, we 
have in the sonnets, where we see reflected the moods 
of his inner life. Love, jealousy, disapointment, de- 
spair, and again the peaceful happiness of renewed 
affection, flit in succession across the magic mirror as 
we turn the pages of this wonderful book. "With 
this same key Shakspere unlocked his heart." 

A singular mystery shrouds the London life of this 
greatest of modern poets. The era in which he lived 
abounded in copious writers; a flood of light is 
thrown upon it by abundant records of every kind. 
This man moved freely among the men of his day ; 
his poems went through many editions ; his plays 
were popular, his friends were numerous, some of them 
among the highest in the land, — and yet his twenty- 
five years in London are almost a blank mystery to us. 
Everything that could throw light upon this period has 
been examined — the contemporaneous writers have 
been sifted for any allusion to his name, the local 
records have been searched, and the end of it all is, 
the personal relations of his London life are a sealed 
book. 

He comes to London about 1586, a country boy, 



5 



barely twenty-two years old, already loaded down for 
the race in life with a wife and three infant children, — 
but without profession or means of support, for his 
father is a bankrupt. He plunges into the labyrinth 
of London life and is lost to sight. In 1592 a gleam 
of light crosses his path : the six years in London have 
won him a place, and he is already, at twenty-eight 
years of age, sufficiently known as a playwright and 
actor to excite the envy of his disappointed rivals and 
the respect of admiring friends ; and we read with 
pleasure Chettle's praise of his civil demeanor, his ex- 
cellence in his profession, his grace in writing, his 
uprightness of dealing, and his good name among 
people " of worship," that is, of gentle blood. 

After this we lose all track again and get no further 
light on his personal life in London, unless what we 
may draw from his works. The records give a meager 
catalogue of dry bones. He acted upon the stage, 
and he patched up old plays for the company to 
which he belonged. He published in 1593-4 two 
poems which pleased the current taste and went 
through several editions. He acquired an interest in 
his dramatic company and wrote for its use the grand 
series of his plays, which were probably withheld from 
publication as far as possible that the company might 
have the sole use of them on the stage. 

He was a prudent business man, prospered in the 
world enough to buy a homestead in Stratford in 1597, 
when only thirty-three years old, and by 1599 had 



acquired a valuable interest in the Blackfriars' the- 
ater. During his remaining life at London he accu- 
mulated considerable means, which were mainly 
invested at his old home. Exactly when he retired 
to Stratford is uncertain, probably by 1610. This 
barren list contains about all we know of the London 
life of Shakspere, — nothing of his friends, of his social 
life, of his personal habits, nothing whatever of the 
experience which led him to explore regions of human 
nature which no other man has ever dared to de- 
scribe. Can we gleam anything more from his plays ? 

If we can ascertain with reasonable certainty their 
chronological order a careful examination of them in 
this view will give some clue to the growth of his genius 
and some hint of the nature of his personal expe- 
rience. True poetry must flow from the heart ; in all 
highest works of the imagination which deal with the 
emotions and the passions that sway the lives of men 
and women, only the genuine has true power. The 
man must have felt it ; the story must be written in 
his own blood. 

The general order of the plays is now pretty well 
agreed upon. First come the light comedies of in- 
cident, with few well-defined characters; such as 
Love's Labor's Lost and Comedy of Errors, or plays 
of pure fancy like Midsummer Night's Dream, or lyric 
drama, such as Romeo and Juliet, full of pretty con- 
ceits and amorous passions. 

Apparently tiring of this gay pageant, he turns to 



English history, and clothes with life the grand series 
of national heroes that adorn his historical plays. 

Life now runs smoother and freer with Shakspere 
and blossoms into his best comedies. Much Ado, 
Twelfth Night, and As You Like It. After this 
group the shadow of the coming storm begins to 
darken the landscape, and the next plays, though we 
call them comedies, are grave and somber in tone, 
heralding the solemn march of tragedy. All's Well 
That Ends Well and Measure for Measure deal 
with the trials and sorrows of life, while Troilus 
and Cressida is absolutely repulsive in its distrust 
of humanity. 

At last the storm fairly breaks upon us with a con- 
stantly darkening cloud of ingratitude and crime. 
Julius Caesar and Hamlet are followed in rapid 
succession by Othello, Lear and Macbeth, where 
men that should have been heroes are hurled to 
the depths of despair and crime by their own folly 
and the ingratitude of those in whom they placed 
the most trust. Then come Antony, Coriolanus 
and Timon, men of heroic stature broken down 
and ruined by their own follies rather than the faults 
of others. 

At this point a marvelous change comes over the 
scene. The storm passes by, the sky clears up and 
the sun breaks through the clouds bathing the land- 
scape in a pastoral beauty. 

The five remaining plays, which some think were 



8 



written at Stratford, are neither tragedies nor come- 
dies, and are often called romances, — sometimes the 
Plays of Reconciliation. In these Shakspere seems 
to have become reconciled to life and looks upon it 
with much kinder feelings. In all of them families 
broken asunder are reunited, friends long separated 
are reconciled, and a spirit of forgiveness breathes 
through them all. Posthumus sounds their key-note 
in his reply to Iachimo when the latter confesses his 
villainy, — worse than that of Iago, because it lacked 
the motive: 

" Kneel not to me, 
The power that I have on you is to spare you, 
The malice toward you to forgive you. Live 
And deal with others better." 

What fate would Shakspere have visited on such a 
wretch five years earlier, when he drew the picture 
of Iago? Prospero in the same tone of forgiveness, 
refuses to wreak his vengeance on his enemies : 

"Yet, with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury 
Do I take part : the rarer action is 
In virtue than in vengeance." 

In this happy spirit of reconciliation and peace 
Shakspere closes his volume. 

Now I am sure he gave us his own experience 
in all the deeper motives of his plays. While I 
would not identify him with any one character, I 
believe the atmosphere of each group of plays ex- 
presses a mood of experience through which he had 



passed. In this conviction I read the story of his 
London life thus : The current ran smoothly for many 
years ; it was full, free and happy. Then came some 
blow that shook his faith in humanity. Perhaps the 
first hint of the change is in the melancholy Jaques 
with his sentimental misanthropy. This mood deep- 
ened rapidly as the emptiness of human life forced 
itself upon him ; the hollowness of men's professions, 
their ingratitude and faithlessness darkened his medi- 
tations. 

But he never sank into utter despair, like Othello, 
nor into the blank, rayless night of unfaith, like 
Timon. His soul was too great for that ; his faith 
and hope triumphed over his sorrows. He felt it 
was better to love than to hate, to forgive than to 
brood over his wrongs, and he came out of his 
bitter experience a wiser and a better man, serene 
and peaceful. A new heaven had opened before 
him, and the earth was transfigured by its light 
with a brighter beauty than it had worn before his 
trials. In this peaceful mood his life ended. 

It is true that Halliwell-Phillips and other matter- 
of-fact Shakspere scholars laugh at this and call it the 
Shakspere " mythus," a creature of the imagination, 
without solid existence. But to me it is very real, and 
the testimony of the plays to the struggles of his inward 
life is as sure and unerring as the witness of the records 
to his outward prosperity. 

The sonnets give some confirmation of this idea, for 



they tell a very similar story — not that they run parallel 
in time with that great wave of feeling pictured in the 
tragedies, for they belong to an earlier period of his 
life, but they record a similar experience which must 
have left its mark on his soul. Let us now turn to an 
examination of these remarkable poems with a special 
view to tracing in them the personality of Shakspere. 

The little volume contains one hundred and fifty- 
four sonnets which were first printed in 1609, pirati- 
cally without much doubt ; but they had been men- 
tioned eleven years earlier in 1598, by Francis Meres, 
as " Shakspere's sugred sonnets among his private 
friends," and in 1599 two of them had found their 
way into print. This is all that is known of their 
origin. I am satisfied for various reasons, but espec- 
ially from a careful comparison with the plays, that 
they were written between 1593 and 1597 ; but the 
majority of writers on Shakspere are in favor of a 
later date. 

As to the meaning of these poems, there is a great 
diversity of opinion. They appear on the surface to 
be addressed to two different persons, Nos. i.-cxxvi. 
to a young nobleman, Shakspere's friend and patron, 
and the remainder to a woman. But many writers 
regard these apparent personalities as merely a veil to 
conceal an allegorical or hermetic meaning ; they have 
thus been made to sing the praises of dramatic art, of 
eternal beauty, of ideal manhood, of Queen Elizabeth, 
of the Catholic Church, and many other fantastic no- 



tions have been found in them, — or put there. Some 
have thought they were mere exercises of the poet's 
fancy; and others that they were written for the use of 
his friends, possibly for hire. 

But the most natural explanation is that they were 
the simple outflow of his feelings, addressed in the 
first series to his young friend and patron, for whom 
he seems to have felt the warmest regard, — while the 
second series expresses his relations to his mistress ; 
and I believe that but for the stain these last are 
thought to cast upon Shakspere's morals, there would 
be no question as to their real meaning; they 
are so overflowing with warm human feeling, — no 
allegory, no exercise of pure fancy, no poetry written 
for hire, could be so full of throbbing life. 

Assuming the sonnets to be genuine and properly 
arranged, a real mirror of Shakspere's experience, the 
story they tell is this : 

In the first flush of assured success, with the hot 
blood of youth boiling in his veins, and thrown by his 
profession in closest personal contact with the riotous 
life of the London stage at that period of loose morals, 
Shakspere fell under the influence of a woman who 
threw a strange spell over him. Of dark complexion, 
with black eyes, she was not handsome, but her pres- 
ence fascinated him, and he yielded to her charms, 
though he knew it was a double crime, for she was the 
wife of another man. 

About the same period he formed a friendship for a 



handsome, gifted young nobleman, whom he calls 
Will, — who returned his regard, and became his 
patron, though much younger than Shakspere. The 
dark woman at last met Will, and perhaps thinking a 
handsome young nobleman a better prize than a poor 
play-actor, set her net for him, and soon snared the 
victim. This double treachery cut Shakspere to the 
quick, and you may trace the growth of his sorrow 
from a bare suspicion to the full assurance of the bitter 
truth, resulting in his separation from his friend. 
Later on the breach between them was healed ; the 
woman disappeared from the scene, or at least from 
the sonnets, and Shakspere was very happy in a re- 
newal of his love for Will, which ripened into the most 
intense personal affection possible between man and 
man. But as his friend reached maturity, he formed 
new acquaintances and neglected Shakspere, which 
again caused him great grief. 

Another poet came upon the scene sharing Will's 
regard and bounty, which filled Shakspere with jealousy 
and produced estrangement between the friends. Then 
came explanations and a partial reconciliation. In the 
midst of these changes the sonnets tell of journeys, — 
two at least in number, — by which the friends were 
separated, aud Shakspere mourned his bereavement 
during the absences. And so various alternations 
followed in the course of their love, as Shakspere 
always called it. Sometimes the stream ran smooth, 
and then again it was turbulent and broken, till at last 



x 3 

chastened by life's trials, they joined hands in an ever- 
lasting friendship, and Shakspere says: 

No, let me be obsequious [devoted] in thy heart, 
And take thou my oblation, poor but free, 
Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art, 
But mutual' render, only me for thee. 

cxxv. 

With this argument as an introduction, we will run 
rapidly through the volume, letting Shakspere tell his 
own story as far as possible. The book opens with 
seventeen sonnets addressed to a youth just coming to 
manhood — in terms of extreme personal compliment, 
urging him to marry and perpetuate his name. 

From fairest creatures we desire increase, 
That thereby beauty's rose might never die, 
But as the riper should by time decease, 
His tender heir might bear his memory. 

I. 

When I do count the clock that tells the time, 
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night, 
When I behold the violet past prime, 
And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white, 
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves, 
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, 
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves, 
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard, 
Then of thy beauty do I question make, 
That thou among the wastes of time must go, 
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake 
And die as fast as they see others grow; 

And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence 
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence. 

XII. 



14 

After these follow nine sonnets praising his friend's 
beauty in language which in these less passionate days 
would seem extravagant in a correspondence between 
two men. 

For example, in number xx. : 

A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted 
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion; 
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted 
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion; 
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling, 
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth; 
A man in hue, all hues in his controlling. 
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth. 

At this point a shade of melancholy, perhaps sus- 
picion, or even jealousy, begins to mingle with the 
sonnets, hinting that some other writer less sincere 
was trying to supplant him in his friend's regard. 
Thus in xxm. he excuses his failure to make more 
open declaration of his love, saying his heart was over- 
charged, its utterance was choked. 

As an unperfect actor on the stage 

Who with his fear is put beside his part, 

Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage, 

Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart, 

So I, for fear of trust, forget to say 

The perfect ceremony of love's rite, 

And in mine own love's strength seem to decay, 

O'ercharg'd with burden of mine own love's might. 

O, let my books be then the eloquence 

And dumb presagers of my speaking breast. 

xxm. 



*5 

In reading these poems we are surprised, almost 
shocked at the extravagant praise of this young man's 
beauty and the ardent phrases of Shakspere's affec- 
tion. He calls him "my love," "dear boy," "lord of 
my love," "my master-mistress," "my beloved," "my 
rose," "dear heart," "next my heaven the best," — 
terms, most of which we feel to-day are sacred to the 
passion of man for woman. " The true motto for the 
first group of Shakspere's sonnets," says Furnivall, " is 
to be seen in David's words : ' I am distressed for 
thee, my brother Jonathan ; very pleasant hast thou 
been to me : Thy love to me was wonderful, passing 
the love of woman.' " Shakspere lived in an age 
when men's passions ran higher than to-day, and were 
expressed with more freedom. The same Italian 
fashion that brought in the sonnet brought this style of 
expression, which seems to us so excessive. " It was 
then not uncommon," says Dyce, " for one man to 
write verses to another in a strain of such tender 
affection as fully warrants us in terming them ' ama- 
tory.' " In confirmation of this odd use of endear- 
ing epithets, turn to what old Menenius says of 
Coriolanus, " I know the general is my lover," and 
still stronger when Portia says of Antonio, "He is the 
bosom lover of my lord," or the language of Aufid- 
ius's servant describing the reception his master gave 
to Coriolanus, " Our general makes a mistress of 
him." 



i6 



The next group, from xxvu. to xxxn., written 
in absence, are tinged with sadness and run upon 
grave themes. In xxix. he bewails his lot in life, 
lamenting his " outcast state." His vocation of actor 
was held in great contempt, and undoubtedly sepa- 
rated him from public intimacy with his friend of 
gentle blood. 

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, 

I all alone beweep my outcast state, 

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, 

And look upon myself and curse my fate, 

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 

Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd, 

Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, 

With what I most enjoy contented least; 

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, 

Haply I think on thee, and then my state, 

Like to the lark at break of day arising 

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate : 

For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings 
That then I scorn to change my state with kings. 

XXIX. 

Who was the man whose " sweet love " could lift 
Shakspere to heaven's gate, and inspire him to sing 
such songs of love? 

Can our language furnish any tribute of affection 
more graceful than this ? 

The closing poem of this group, xxxn., is writ- 
ten in great depression, as if Shakspere felt that he 
had a rival whose poems eclipsed his own, and who 
bade fair to overtop him in his friend's esteem. 



*7 



If thou survive my well-contented day, 

When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, 

And shalt by fortune once more re-survey 

These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover, 

Compare them with the bettering of the time, 

And though they be outstripp'd by every pen, 

Reserve them for my love not for their rhyme, 

Exceeded by the height of happier men. 

O, then vouchsafe me but this loving thought : 

" Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing age, 

A dearer birth than this his love had brought, 

To march in ranks of better equipage ; 

But since he died and poets better prove, 

Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love." 

XXXII. 

These lines refer to his poems, including his son- 
nets, probably, and not to his plays. The dramas 
were in the nature of professional work, written for 
actual presentation on the stage and not for glory ; 
but the poems he regarded as the basis of his literary 
fame and of his patron's regard. Such was certainly 
his feeling at this early period of his life, whatever 
may have been his later sentiments. Fleay says : 
" Poems were fit work for a prince, but plays were 
only congruous with strolling vagabondism ; " and so 
Halliwell-Phillips remarks : " Works of a strictly po- 
etical character were held in far higher esteem than 
dramatic compositions." "The contemporaries of 
Shakspere allude more than once to the two poems as 
being his most important works and as those on 
which his literary distinction chiefly rested." 



i8 



This sonnet conveys the impression that he was 
made unhappy by the jealous fancy that his poetical 
rivals, the "happier men" of his own day, in the 
progress of the times would excel his own " poor rude 
lines," and displace him from his friend's regard. 

At this point let us leave the sonnets written to his 
young patron and take up the second series, from 
cxxvi. to clii., addressed to the Dark Woman; most 
of which are parallel, in order of time, with xxx. to 
xlii. She was not beautiful, and he admits it while 
he confesses her power, for there was a witchery in 
her black eyes he could not resist. 

Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me, 
Knowing thy heart torments me with disdain, 
Have put on black and loving mourners be, 
Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain ; 
And truly not the morning sun of heaven 
Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east, 
Nor that full star that ushers in the even 
Doth half that glory to the sober west, 
As those two mourning eyes become thy face. 

CXXXII. 

Such a pair of " mourning eyes " might well prove 
dangerous, but she re-inforced their power by throwing 
the spell of music over him too, as she played on the 
virginal, the piano of Elizabeth's day. 

How oft when thou, my music, music play'st, 
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds 
With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway'st 
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds, 
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap 



To kiss the tender inward of thy hand, 
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap, 
At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand ! 
To be so tickled, they would change their state 
And situation with those dancing chips, 
O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait, 
Making dead wood more blest than living lips. 
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this, 
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss. 

cxxvm. 

No harmony his mistress drew from the virginal 
certainly could equal the exquisite music of these 
words. 

But he soon becomes aware that the Dark Woman 
is laying snares for his young friend, and suspects he 
too may have fallen a victim to her charms. 

Two loves I have of comfort and despair, 
Which like two spirits do suggest me still; 
The better angel is a man right fair, 
The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill. 
To win me soon to hell, my female evil 
Tempteth my better angel from my side, 
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil, 
Wooing his purity with her foul pride. 

CXL. 

At this point we will leave the sonnets to his mis- 
tress, and turn back to the first series, where we find 
a kindred group begins at xxxiii. Shakspere has 
sustained a wrong at the hands of his friend. 

Full many a glorious morning have I seen 
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, 
Kissing the golden face the meadows green, 



Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy ; 

Anon permit the basest clouds to ride, 

With ugly rack on his celestial face, 

And from the forlorn world his visage hide, 

Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace ; 

Even so my sun one early morn did shine 

With all-triumphant splendor on my brow ; 

But out, alack ! he was but one hour mine, 

The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now. 

Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth ; 

Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun 
staineth. xxxni. 

His friend offers some apology, which Shakspere 
says "heals the wound but cures not the disgrace." 

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day, 
And make me travel forth without my cloak, 
To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way, 
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke? 
'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break, 
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face, 
For no man well of such a salve can speak, 
That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace ; 
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief; 
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss ; 
The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief 
To him that bears the strong offence's cross, 

Ah ! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds, 
And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds. 

xxxiv. 

Still it is better we should be separated, said Shaks- 
pere in sonnet xxxvi. I cannot help loving you, but 
the disgrace is such and so publicly known that it is 
better you should not honor me with any marks of 



your good will, — we must separate. Sonnet XL. con- 
fesses the cause of the breach between the friends : 
the Dark Woman had tempted Will, who had fallen 
a victim to her charms. It was a double treachery 
and a double bereavement. 

I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief, 
Although thou steal thee all my poverty; 
And yet, love knows, it is a greater grief 
To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury. 

XL. 

The Dark Woman now disappears from the sonnets, 
and I believe she ceased to cast her baleful spell over 
Shakspere's life. There has been much speculation 
as to who the woman was that could so entrance this 
prince of poets, but there is no clue to her identity. 
Perhaps the black-eyed Rosaline of Love's Labor's 
Lost is an early likeness of her, and possibly the 
faithless Cleopatra, " that serpent of old Nile . . . 
with Phcebus's amorous pinches black," is a later 
sketch from memory. If so, we have her portrait 
without her name. In all the witchery she cast over 
him Shakspere knew she was false to him as well as 
false to her duty, and when in excuse for her short- 
comings she reminded him of his lapses from duty, 
he answered : 

O, but with mine compare thou thine own state, 
And thou shalt find it merits not reproving ; 
Or, if it do, not from those lips of thine, 
That have profan'd their scarlet ornaments 
And seal'd false bonds of love as oft as mine, 

CXLII. 



In leaving this chapter of the sonnets let us not 
pass harsh judgment upon Shakspere's lapse from duty, 
but remember that the times were wild, the morals of 
England were loose and ungoverned, his fellows in 
his profession with whom he was necessarily on terms 
of intimacy were generally profligate in morals and 
dissipated in habits, and he himself in the very flush 
of early manhood. The calm, deep wisdom of later 
years was not yet his; as Dowden says, he could 
understand Romeo, but he could not have conceived 
of Prospero. Still it is characteristic of the manli- 
ness and honesty of his soul that he never fooled 
himself with justifying his sin. He deplores the 
"mad fever" which his mistress's eyes kindle in his 
blood, but he never defends his own conduct. And 
if I read aright some of the later sonnets, he out- 
lived this madness, and looked back on the spells the 
siren had cast over him, with a shudder of aversion. 

Losing sight of the Dark Woman, we turn again to 
the story of his relations to his young friend. With 
WXLiii. begins another group. Shakspere is away on a 
journey and much depressed. In xlvi. he has received 
Will's picture, which gives him great comfort in his 
absence, but an increasing sadness comes over the 
lines. At times there is a relief from it, and then it 
wells out again with renewed force, — love with increas- 
ing jealousy, as though Will, as he grew older, was 
slipping farther and farther from his grasp. 

Then he weeps to think that his friend's beauty 



23 

must fade; that he must live in such a wicked world; 
and in a strain that reminds us of Hamlet's soliloquy, 
"To be or not to be," he bewails the heartlessness and 
degeneracy of the times, deploring that Will's name 
had been tarnished by public scandal. In this sad 
frame lxxi. and lxxii. look forward to death, and he 
hopes his friend will forget him, as he was unworthy 
to be remembered. 

No longer mourn for me when I am dead 
Than you shall hear the surly, sullen bell 
Give warning to the world that I am fled 
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell; 

But let your love even with my life decay, 

Lest the wise world should look into your moan, 
And mock you with me after I am gone. 

LXXI. 

Sonnet lxxii. continues the same strain, and ex- 
presses in remarkable language his dislike for his 
dramatic works : 

My name be buried where my body is, 

And live no more to shame nor me nor you! 

For I am sham'd by that which I bring forth. 

This must refer to his plays. Sonnet lxxiii. is full 
of tender feeling. In it Shakspere is still haunted 
with the thought of approaching death : 

That time of year thou mayst in me behold 
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. 
In me thou seest the twilight of such day 



2 4 



As after sunset fadeth in the west, 

Which by and by black night doth take away, 

Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. 

In me thou seest the glowing of such fire 

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, 

As the death-bed whereon it must expire, 

Consum'd with that which it was nourished by. 

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, 
To love that well which thou must leave ere long. 

This mention of himself as in the decline of years, 
when he could hardly have been much over thirty-five, 
is very singular. In lxii. he says : 

My glass shows me myself indeed, 
Beated and chopped with tann'd antiquity, 

and lxxi., which we just read, seems to expect that 
the " surly, sullen bell," will soon " give warning to the 
world that he has fled." These and other similar 
passages have caused much discussion, and are ap- 
pealed to as proving that Shakspere could not be 
speaking in his own name in these sonnets. But in 
cxxxviil, addressed to his mistress and published in 
1599, he laments that his "days are past the best," 
though he was only in his thirty-fifth year, and in 
Romeo and Juliet Lady Capulet, though only twenty- 
eight years old, says : 

This sight of death is as a bell, 
That warns my old age to a sepulchre. 

Thus, also, Robert Greene in his Farewell to Folly, 
when only thirty years old, says age is approaching. 



25 

As already stated, men lived faster in those days, and 
grew old much earlier. Besides, Shakspere is here 
comparing himself involuntarily with a man much 
younger than himself, and ten years from twenty-five 
to thirty-five cover a wider gap than twenty will later 
in life. But the more I read this group of sonnets, 
the more I feel Shakspere at this time must have 
been in feeble health and anticipated the near approach 
of death, which probably contributed to his despon- 
dency. 

At lxxviii. he begins to complain that other poets 
have usurped his place, especially some one man of 
great learning and grace of diction, of whom he writes 
thus, in lxxx., which is particularly interesting as giv- 
ing us a glimpse of the modest estimate Shakspere 
placed upon his poems ; though I do not suppose this 
sonnet has any reference to his plays. 

O how I faint when I of you do write, 
Knowing a better spirit doth use your name, 
And in the praise thereof spends all his might, 
To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame! 
But since your worth, wide as the ocean is, 
The humble as the proudest sail doth bear, 
My saucy bark, inferior far to his, 
On your broad main doth wilfully appear. 
Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat, 
Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride; 
Or, being wrack'd, I am a worthless boat, 
He of tall building and of goodly pride. 
Then if he thrive and I be cast away, 
The worst was this, — my love was my decay. 



26 



The favors received by his rival continue to cause 
him great anxiety and depression of spirits ; and he con- 
trasts his own "tongue-tied muse" with the "golden 
quill " and " precious phrase " of the other poet. 

A singular distrust of his own powers wells up to the 
surface of the sonnets whenever he comes into com- 
petition with the poets of his own day. This is based, 
seemingly, upon his own lack of early opportunity and 
early education ; a fear that his " poor, rude lines " 
may be "outstripped" in his friends' favor by "ranks 
of better equipage." His own early equipment for 
literary life had been very limited, while his poetical 
rivals, both sonneteers and dramatists, were armed with 
the discipline of a university education, Daniel, Dray- 
ton, Chapman and Davies having been educated at 
Oxford, Greene and Marlow at Cambridge. Hence, 
Shakspere speaks of his own " poor, rude lines," " un- 
tutored lines," "unpolished lines," and contrasts him- 
self with the "bettering of the time," "better equi- 
page," and the "height of happier men." 

And when he meets his mysterious rival of the later 
sonnets, the same discouraging thought rises to his 
mind as he contrasts his own " rude ignorance " with 
"the learned's wing," the "precious phrase by all the 
muses filed," speaks of his rival's "arts" and "graces" 
and superior "style," calls himself an "unlettered 
clerk" as contrasted with "that able spirit," with his 
"polished form of well refined pen," and satirically 
alludes to the "strained touches rhetoric can give," 
in comparison with his own "true plain words." 



2 7. 

The fault of interpretation has been that the son- 
nets have been placed too late in Shakspere's life, 
when these differences had vanished. In his early 
days he felt keenly his deficiencies, but in his later 
life this want had disappeared ; and such a tone of 
self-distrust as pervades the sonnets, honest enough 
and natural enough in the beginning of his career, 
would have been a piece of affectation, unworthy of 
Shakspere a few years later, when experience had 
stored his mind and refined his powers, and when 
the success of both poems and dramas justified Meres 
(1598) in placing him in the front rank of English 
poets. 

Returning to the sonnets, listen to the singular 
description of his rival in lxxxvi. 

Was it the proud full sail of his great verse, 
Bound for the prize of all too precious you, 
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, 
Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew? 
Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write 
Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead? 
No, neither he, nor his compeers by night 
Giving him aid, my verse astonished. 
He, nor that affable familiar ghost 
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence, 
As victors of my silence cannot boast; 
I was not sick of any fear from thence ; 

But when your countenance fill'd up his line, 
Then lacked I matter ; that enfeebled mine. 

There is a buccaneer flavor about the first couplet 
that takes us back to the age which rang with the ex- 



28 



ploits of Raleigh, Drake and Hawkins. It would 
seem that so definite a description as he gives here of 
his rival could be easily identified, but the scholars 
are still at odds as to who it was. Dowden inclines 
to the opinion it was Chapman, the translator of 
Homer. 

Shakspere now falls into the deepest despondency 
and resolves that he will never see his friend again, 
though still protesting the most ardent love. While 
in this fever of jealousy, other hard trials seem to 
have fallen upon him and he utters this cry of despair. 

Then hate me when thou wilt — if ever, now; 

Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross, 

Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow, 

And do not drop in for an after-loss. 

Ah, do not, when my heart hath 'scaped this sorrow, 

Come in the rearward of a conquer'd woe; 

Give not a windy night a rainy morrow, 

To linger out a purposed overthrow. 

If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last, 

When other petty griefs have done their spite, 

But in the onset come; so shall I taste 

At first the very worst of fortune's might, 

And other strains of woe, which now seem woe, 
Compared with loss of thee will not seem so. 

xc. 

After some more alternations of hope and depres- 
sion Shakspere becomes so deeply discouraged by his 
friend's neglect that he ceases to write sonnets. 

From the warnings the poems give of public scan- 
dal connected with his friend's name we may infer he 



2 9 . 

was drinking deep of the riotous gayety of London 
life, as was perhaps natural to a rich and handsome 
young nobleman of that day. 

A break of a year and a half now ensues in the 
continuity of the sonnets, apparently an entire sus- 
pension of intercourse between the friends. When 
the curtain rises again the rival has disappeared and 
Shakspere is once more in peace and harmony with 
his friend, and breaks out into this vigorous protest 
of his desolation when separated from Will. 

How like a winter hath my absence been 
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! 
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! 
What old December's bareness everywhere! 
And yet this time remov'd was summer's time; 
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, 
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime, 
Like widow'd wombs after their lord's decease: 
Yet this abundant issue seem'd to me 
But hope of orphans and unfathered fruit; 
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee, 
j And, thou away, the very birds are mute; 

Or, if they sing, 't is with so dull a cheer 
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near. 
I XCVII. 

Then he chides his Muse for her long silence : 

Where art thou Muse that thou forget'st so long, 
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might? 
Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song 
Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light? 
Return forgetful Muse, and straight redeem 
In gentle numbers time so idly spent. ' C. 

\ 



3° 

We may reasonably suppose the "time so idly 
spent" on "worthless song" and "base subjects" 
was devoted to the production of his plays, probably 
about the time of Shylock and Portia, or perhaps 
Jack Falstaff and Hotspur. 

That Shakspere should speak of his plays with 
aversion will not seem so remarkable if we remember 
first, these sonnets were written prior to 1597, before 
the creation of his best tragedies ; moreover, at that 
time the playwright was usually an actor also ; he 
belonged to the company he wrote for, and Shaks- 
pere as we well know acted in his own plays, while 
both professions were regarded with great contempt. 
" In his day to become an actor was to cast social 
ambition aside, and to tread self esteem under foot," 
says Richard Grant White. The playwrights of his 
time were generally men of low, dissolute habits, most 
of whom came to miserable ends. Under these cir- 
cumstances it is not strange that Shakspere regarded 
his plays, certainly at this early period of his life, 
simply as the tools with which he earned his bread in 
a hateful profession, a calling which branded him as 
an outcast from the society he longed to enter. 

It is often inferred that he was indifferent to his 
plays, because he never published them; but we should 
bear in mind that they were written for his dramatic 
troupe to act and not for us to read. He owned an 
interest in one of the leading companies in London, 
with which he acted and for which he wrote plays; and 



3 1 

by publication his company would have lost the exclu- 
sive use of them. Therefore, no complete edition of 
his plays was issued till 1623, seven years after his 
death; while, on the other hand, his poems were pub- 
lished by himself with great care and with formal in- 
troductions, the Venus in 1593 and the Lucrece in 

J 594- 

Bearing all this in mind, read again xxix., already 
quoted, where he laments his " outcast state," and 
speaks of himself as 

Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, 

"With what I most enjoy contented least; 
and lxxii., where he says, "I am shamed by that 
which I bring forth," and the lines already quoted 
from c, addressed to his Muse, 

Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song, 

Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light? 

Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem 

In gentle numbers time so idly spent. 
From all this, we are led irresistibly to the conclu- 
sion that the connection of his name with his plays 
brought him no satisfaction at the time the sonnets 
were written. 

Returning to our story, he excuses his long silence 
spent on such "worthless song" and "base subjects" 
in the following lovely sonnet : 

My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming; 

I love not less, though less the show appear: 

That love is merchandiz'd whose rich esteeming 



32 



The owner's tongue doth publish everywhere. 
Our love was new and then but in the spring, 
When I was wont to greet it with my lays. 
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing, 
And stops her pipe in growth of riper days; 
Not that the summer is less pleasant now 
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night; 
But that wild music burthens every bough, 
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight. 
Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my tongue, 
Because I would not dull you with my song. 

CH. 

After singing over with ever varying form the same 
old refrain of Will's beauty and truth, he looks back 
with a sigh over his own past life : 

O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, 
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, 
That did not better for my life provide 
Than public means, which public manners breeds. 
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, 
And almost thence my nature is subdued 
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand. 
Pity me then'and wish I were renew'd. 

CXI. 

After this his distrust and jealousy disappear and 
the course of his love runs smoothly through the re- 
maining sonnets. In cxvi. he praises the eternal 
quality of true love, his faith in the " marriage of true 
minds," with an earnestness that no poet has ever 
equaled : 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 

Admit impediments. Love is not love 

Which alters when it alteration finds, 



33 

Or bends with the remover td remove: 

O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, 

That looks on tempests and is never shaken; 

It is the star to every wandering bark, 

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. 

Love : s not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 

Within his bending sickle's compass come; 

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 

But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 

If this be error, and upon me prov'd, 

I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd. 

As he looks back at his experience he shudders at 
what he has been through, and draws new comfort be- 
cause his love has been rebuilt stronger than before. 

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears 
Distill'd from limbecks foul as hell within, 
Applying fears to hopes and hopes to fears, 
Still losing when I saw myself to win! 
What wretched errors hath my heart committed, 
Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never! 
How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted 
In the distraction of this madding fever! 
O, benefit of ill! now I find true 
That better is by evil still made better; 
And ruin'd love, when it is built anew, 
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater. 
So I return rebuk'd to my content, 
And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent. 

cxix. 

Again and again he repeats in various forms his 
remorse at his own lack of fidelity and his earnest as- 
surance that no change in life can ever affect their 
relations. And at last he closes by warning his friend 



34 

that kind as Nature had been to him, she must at last 
surrender him to the great conqueror, Death, — and 
with this solemn thought the poems close. 

The sonnets are a record of temptation and trial, 
a great spirit struggling through sin and suffering into 
peace, through distrust and suspicion, through the 
trials of jealousy and wounded feelings, into recon- 
ciliation and love. Shakspere's soul was too great to 
have settled into sensual enjoyment as the end of life, 
or to stop on the way towards something better and 
rest contented in misanthropy and cynicism. The 
sweep of his vision was too wide to be satisfied with 
these. Through repentance, forgiveness aud reconcil- 
iation he attained a peace and happiness which noth- 
ing else could have given him. The story is very 
similar to that which is drawn from the plays; but the 
closing scenes of the sonnets lack one element which 
gives a calmer beauty to the later plays, — the presence 
of domestic happiness. In every one of the later 
plays called "romances," and these are necessary to 
complete the picture of his life, the unity of a broken 
family is restored, domestic sorrows are healed, jeal- 
ousy rooted out, and the family is brought together in 
happiness and harmony. In each of these plays the 
central attraction is a lovely girl, just budding into 
womanhood, round whose fortunes the story revolves. 
Marina, Perdita, Imogen, Miranda, — what grace and 
beauty they express. In two of these dramas, Pericles 



35 

and Winter's Tale, a wife and mother is restored from 
the dead to the arms of a happy husband and chil- 
dren; while in that part of Henry VIII. which is gen- 
erally believed to be almost the last work of Shak- 
spere's pen, the chief interest gathers about the dying 
queen forgiving the king from whom she had suffered 
so much wrong, and blessing him with her last breath. 
" Tell him, in death I blessed him, for so I will." 

In 1609 Shakspere is thought to have returned to 
Stratford to rejoin his family, from whom he had been 
separated for so many years. His daughters were then 
in the bloom of early womanhood, and his wife was 
still living. It is grateful to me to believe that the 
" well contented spirit " of the later plays was the re- 
flection of his own heart in his Stratford home. There 
he had found a peace that the brilliant society of 
London and the plaudits of popular favor had never 
brought him. 

And now, as we leave him at rest under his own 
roof-tree, does the story thus outlined grate harshly on 
our feelings ? Does this admission of his transgres- 
sions cloud our ideal of Shakspere ? Such transcend- 
ent genius as his must always move in the presence of 
great danger, from the very fullness of its powers and 
strength of its emotions. 

His strength's abundance weakens his own heart. 

It is not given to such men to tread the safe and 
beaten ways of common life. They are driven by 



36 

their passions into the wilderness of temptation. Their 
paths lie along giddy heights and across deep gulfs of 
despair. Some drop by the wayside and perish. 
Shakspere was saved by his generous trust in human 
goodness and that love which 

Is an ever-fixed mark 
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; 
It is the star to every wandering bark. 

Under its guidance he came out of the storm and 
bitter experience of life reconciled to the world; a 
renewed faith in men and women brightened the close 
of his life, and shed peace and contentment on his 
own heart. 



J 






i»**v 



